Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix

he imagines her tongue and lips elsewhere. “Should I show you where the ache is?”
    “By all means, let’s take a look.” Dallas bends and helps her up to her feet. “They don’t call me Doctor Snake for nothing, darlin’.”
    “That’s my deepest hope.” With a coy flutter of her lashes, Bella-donna grabs the hem of her skirt and slowly inches it up her dark, bare thighs.
    Dallas drops to his knees. His fingers caress her revealed flesh, and he follows the skirt’s path up with his hungry lips. As he kisses her through her purple panties, her hoo-hah suddenly jingles and trills. Insistently. He looks up at her. “Darlin’, you’re ringing.”
    “I hope you’re answering,” she purrs. “Please, please, please answer. Now!”
    Jingle-jingle-jingle. JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE!
    Dallas jerked awake. Squinting in the rosy dawn light, he slipped a hand underneath the waistband of his boxers trying to recapture his dream—Belladonna, of all women! But a nice Belladonna. Very nice—then realized he was still hearing the shrill jingling.
    With a groan, he pulled his hand free and fumbled for the ringing phone. He snagged the receiver and dropped it once, earning himself a sharp ding! from the phone, before he managed to tuck the receiver against his ear. “You ruined a damned fine dream, podna,” he growled, “so this had better be real fucking good.”
    “Be dat how you say hello, Dallas Brûler? I’m sure yo’ mama taught you better manners,” Gabrielle LaRue said.
    Dallas sat up in bed, wide-awake, and suddenly feeling twelve and not thirty-two. And definitely no longer horny. “Gabrielle, I’m sorry, I thought one o’ the guys was messing with me.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. His gaze flicked to the empty pint bottle of Wild Turkey on the nightstand. He closed his eyes. “Busy night.”
    “You need to get yo’ heinie out of bed and moving,” Gabrielle said. “I just talked to Kallie and she says someone tried to lay a nasty trick on her, but it done ended up killing some other poor soul instead.”
    Dallas’s eyes flew open. “What the fuck? She was fine when I last saw her. She was with some nomad conjurer . . .”
    “ Was fine be right, boy,” Gabrielle said. “I t’ought I sent you to watch de girl, not have busy nights. You need to find out what’s going on. I just did a reading and de cards and de shells showed me a few t’ings I don’t much care for.”
    “What kinda things?”
    “I think Kallie’s going to be accused of murder by dat foolish Hecatean Alliance and jailed. We can’t allow dat.”
    “Jesus Christ. What happens if she is—jailed, I mean?”
    “We can’t allow dat,” Gabrielle repeated, her hard and flat voice brooking no nonsense or failure. “Now you go make sure it don’t happen.”
    “What if I’m too late?” Dallas asked, then added before Gabrielle could answer him, “and what if the cards were wrong about the danger they warned you about all those years ago?”
    “Hush, boy. The loa be listening, and dey don’t like being called liars. Neither do I.”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to imply anyone was a liar, just that a mistake mighta been made.”
    “No mistake. You be a root doctor, Dallas Brûler, one I trained—so you tell me, how many times de cards been wrong for you?”
    Dallas trailed a hand through his hair. He sighed.
    “Cards ain’t never been wrong,” he admitted. “But sometimes I am.”
    Gabrielle snorted. “Meaning you be human. Me too. But Kallie ain’t, not completely, dat is. You need to find out who died and how, and if she be guilty of it or not, den—no matter what—keep her outta Hecatean hands.”
    “Like I said, what if it’s too late?” Dallas bent and scooped his jeans up from the beige carpet. Balancing the phone receiver between his cheek and shoulder, he stood and pulled on his jeans, zipping them up.
    “Den you let me know.” Gabrielle’s voice suddenly sounded weary and wrung